My Blog

The Blind Assassin Meander: Week Six

Written by

admin

in

Another great thread this week — thanks to all! It’s a real treat, I say, this ongoing conversation. A stately pleasure dome of commentary, if you will. And one I super appreciate. Lately I’ve gotten in the rhythm of doing all my TBA reading on Saturdays and Sundays, and it’s just a fantastic of a way to spend a hunkered weekend, sitting on the porch, catching up with MA, Iris, other characters named and nameless, and youse.

With each section, I’m increasingly enjoying/appreciating the book, impending badness and all. As Blue F said in the thread, MA has a great sense of when we’re ready for more Iris, more noir, more present tense, more past, more snark at nosey academics, and more alien side plots-within-plots that Itto Ogami is pretty sure are 50/50 legit.

I keep marveling at MA/Iris’ knack for the lethal throwaway line that pulls you forward, including this pair from page 296 (blue):

“Not much you can do to kill a rock.” and “when he was still coming up with reasons for what he thought and did”…

and of course: “blood is thicker than water, as anyone knows who has tasted both.” (288) Yikes.

And in the continuing saga of our ever-expanding vocabularies, here’s one more for the list: “nacreous” — turns out to have a much lovelier meaning than I expected. And there’s some comfort in that. May all your new words turn out to be lovelier than they first sound.

Where to from here? Let’s meet up on the other side of a few more weather reports, at the bottom of page 357 (Blue) where “Mr. Griffen’s remarks were roundly applauded.” Which honestly scares the hell out of me.

Say pally, how’s this work again? Finish on time, comment each week, and stay in the hunt for a free “I Survived The Blind Assassin Meander” magnet. Oh, and in case you were wondering: This is the post for comments on Chapters 7.3 (“Postcards from Europe”) through 8.4 (“The Mail and Empire, 1936”).

Comments

35 responses to “The Blind Assassin Meander: Week Six”

  1. xian Avatar
    xian

    pant, pant…

    Reply
  2. e Avatar
    e

    well, of course–i finally catch all the way up to the meanderers, and now, i’ll have to stop reading for days…if i’m good.

    wonderful intertwined stories: i’ve found them less ominous than others have. example: i took the whole cut-her-throat-or-love-her-forever thing as mostly a joke, part of the couple’s gangster noir love banter.

    but is every thread of the story brutal to women? yes absolutely. from iris being trapped into marriage to save her father to the two war chums who, bored with their more standard sexual fantasies, pummel the peach women to death. these all feel true to the world.

    SPOILER ALERT (not sure this is actually a spoiler–i’ve read so much in one stretch to catch up that i couldn’t tell you where this came into sight–but…):
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    of course it’s been iris with alex all along–all of her wit is there in their conversations, but without the self-assurance and bitterness she’s developed as she’s grown older. so, is the blind assassin his story, written up by iris, and passed off as laura’s after laura dies? are we supposed to think he’s the assassin, and iris is the girl without a voice? i’m prepared to be wrong about anything i’m thinking–and it’s a tribute to atwood, and a delight, that it’s still not clear where she’s heading.

    Reply
  3. Willem Avatar
    Willem

    Yes, I’ve been thinking along those lines, too. The other day I was starting to fear Iris, uh, drove Laura to suicide because she was with Alex and Laura couldn’t take the betrayal (after the betrayal of marrying Richard).

    Reply
  4. Computilo Avatar
    Computilo

    So much of this section made me think, of all things, of “The King and I,” especially Yul Brynner singing “A Puzzlement.” {Some of the other gems in this musical would fit as well, including “Shall We Dance,” ” Happy Land,” “Hello Young Lovers,” and “My Lord and Master,” but that musing might need another post.)

    “There are times I almost think
    I am not sure of what I absolutely know
    Very often find confusion
    In conclusion, I concluded long ago.”

    This is most certainly what I experienced reading this section. Every time I thought I had the plot figured out, some sort of zinger made me doubt.

    Boyd and Will finding themselves on the planet Aa’A, with the Peach Women, a land of perfect happiness, but not. “No carnivorous animals, though there were lots of butterflies and singing birds.” This idyllic environment, however, lacked “a great big grilled steak, a big stack of French fries, and a nice cold beer.” Not to mention the stress of wondering when the women would be “disorganizing their molecules.”

    And MA (as Alex?) noting that “Anyway, taken to its logical conclusion, every story is sad, because at the end, everyone dies.”

    The banter between the two noir lovers (I also am now pretty sure we’re talking about Alex and Iris here) regarding fidelity in their relationship made me wonder whether Iris is pregnant with Alex’s child. I also, like Willem, wondered whether this tryst in general was Laura’s downfall.

    Switching back to Siam, Anna finds herself in a land of perfect happiness, but not. The King, introduced to a new life philosophy, becomes more muddled than ever.

    “Oh, sometimes I think that people going mad
    Ah, sometimes I think that people not so bad
    But not matter what I think, I must go on living life
    As leader of my kingdom, I must go forth
    Be father to my children and husband to each wife
    Etcetera, etcetera and so forth

    But is a puzzlement.”

    Reply
  5. The Other Susan C Avatar
    The Other Susan C

    I agree with e that “Laura’s” book is probably about Iris and Andrew, and that the story of the Peach women is brutal and disturbing. I am wondering what it means when she says he’s wrong about the Peach women. “They aren’t the way you think.” Is it that they are not shameless, but instead their “whorish” behavior and willingness to do anything to keep the men pleased Is due to other motivation – like fear? Is it that the Peach women do feel pain when they are pummeled, despite appearing to not? Maybe it’s that she knows with painful clarity that it is not the men who are trapped in this pseudo Eden where women endeavor to fulfill male fantasies. How awful for her to be flippantly told that the only choices are staying in that bubble, or dying. Maybe he’s the blind assassin because he’s killing her, too, and he can’t see it.

    Reply
  6. Itto Ogami Avatar
    Itto Ogami

    Watched an interview with MA by Charlie Rose, which takes place after TBA won the Booker Prize. MA is fascinating. Sample MA observations that stood out. No spoiler alerts needed.

    How she searches for the way into the story. Often starts with an image, which can morph. In TBA it evolved into the trunk.
    That the hardest part is beginning. And convincing yourself that this will go forward.
    Terror of failure, even after all her success. Terror of the blank age.
    That stories and their enjoyment are built into part of being human.
    How she’s abandoned books halfway through. One time, a 100 pages into a book, she rewrote it and started over, changing its original third person optic.
    She won’t share an early draft or portion with anyone. That would drain her energy, as she would be compelled to tell the ending, which saps her drive. And, she doesn’t want other early perspectives, observations, likes or dislikes.

    In addition to book song lists, these meanders need food and drink. After all, CV sometimes posts photos of books with coffee drinks, or so it’s been uttered. Hither and thither.

    MA’s favorite food. Lemon poppy seed muffins
    Favorite alcoholic beverage. Single malt scotch. Straight up.

    Just made coconut ice cream with cinnamon, dark chocolate and chili, so I’m adding that.

    Bon app

    Reply
  7. So-Called Bill Avatar
    So-Called Bill

    Man, she sure is keeping a lot of balls in the air. The next installment can’t come soon enough.

    Reply
  8. KT Avatar
    KT

    Thinking along the same lines. Is it just me or, as we move along in the book within the book, is the voice of the author starting to sound more like the voice of Iris? I’m wondering if it would seem obvious if I tried re-reading from the start.

    Reply
  9. Alyssa Avatar
    Alyssa

    I thought many of you might be interested in this recent podcast featuring MA. Interesting to hear her at age 80, close to the age of our narrator. She seems to get so much right about the indignities of aging, though I wonder if Atwood would write the character the same way now. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/podcasts/sugar-calling-margaret-atwood-coronavirus.html

    Reply
  10. Jeff G Avatar
    Jeff G

    Another week of grand comedy and horror. Iris’ oppressive,arranged wedding and marriage to Richard is reminding me a heckuva lot of Lila and Stefano in My Brilliant Friend (novel and excellent HBO adaptation)–as well as the wedding/marriage in Unorthodox. But TBA has I think the single most depressing description of a new marriage I’ve ever read, after Iris plops herself down, angry and depressed, on their new bed (furnished by Winfred):

    “This, then, was where I was to grin and bear it–the bed I hadn’t quite made, but now must lie in. And this was the ceiling I would be staring up at from now on, through the muslin fog, while earthly matters went on below my throat.”

    How romantic!

    I like, too, that she says “throat” rather than “head”, which struck me as odd at first, until I started thinking about how her voice is really all Iris has–it’s how she survives. It’s her biggest weapon. And while she has plenty of reason to be furious with the position she’s in, the way she punches down to Myra just a few pages later is condescending and ugly (even if it’s just in her head), in which she is bemused that Myra is not following along with her heaven/hell metaphor in the kitchen: “Poor Myra was baffled, as she always is by theological discourse. She likes her God plain- plain and raw, like a radish.”

    So, yeah, of course e. and everyone else is right that the couple is Iris and Alex, and not Laura. How the book came to be, who wrote it, and why, and why Iris seems to be such a disgraced figure still remains to be seen, but it’s getting easier to speculate now.

    Excellent read, and has others have noted, pretty hard to put down now.

    Reply
  11. The Same Mike Avatar
    The Same Mike

    You were right to be afraid of the crowd loving Richard’s words, Cecil!

    Can’t wait to watch the MA interview — thanks Itto.

    Onward!

    Reply
  12. Peaseblossom Avatar
    Peaseblossom

    “Sympathy from strangers can be ruinous.”

    “Richard liked to say he picked things up for a song, which was odd, because he never sang.”

    I guess I’m weary of this pandemic. Everything about it: the news reports, the statistics, the blaming, the finger pointing, the politics, the fact checking, the quarantine. So ordinarily I’d write about either of the short quotations above; instead I keep returning to “…making overblown predictions in the full knowledge that none of what they’re telling us may actually come true.”

    Song of the week: “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers” by Neil Diamond and Barbra Streisand…for Iris.

    Reply
  13. Computilo Avatar
    Computilo

    Thanks for the food and drink reminder. I had to go back and re-read this section just looking for food and drink references, exclusive of Peach Women. Poor Iris is often hungry, and not just for food.

    Reply
  14. blue_f Avatar
    blue_f

    Many great comments about this section so far. I agree on what has been discussed above – the ongoing theme of brutality against women, the female figures subordinating themselves to men; that it’s likely Iris in Laura’s book; However, we still have almost a third of the book ahead of us and I’m not sure if MA would let us see through her story quite yet. But then again I wonder, do I really “see trough” the story? Probably not.
    I know something in this plot will catch me totally off guard.

    I underlined this (from The Blind Assassin: Carnivore Stories):
    “I will always remember this, she tells herself. Then: Why am I thinking about memory? It’s not then yet, it’s now. It’s not over.”
    Why am I thinking about memory? — What a great question, which rings so true. Living in the present is a challenge sometimes.

    Finally, a grammar question (from a non native speaker):
    In this section, for the third time in this book, I’ve found a “would of had” phrase which I believe to be wrong. In the chapter about the Peach Women of Aa’A, it reads: “I just wish we’d of had the time …” Isn’t this wrong? Shouldn’t it be “…we’d have had the time…”? What am I missing here?

    Reply
  15. Susan Ca Avatar
    Susan Ca

    I’ve fallen behind, so just entering a placeholder here. I’m halfway through the section and dismayed at what’s unfolding. More later today if I catch up.

    Reply
  16. Neil Avatar
    Neil

    Methinks there are two blind assassins in this book. Money quote when Iris spots Alex across the street and reaches out her hand as he turns the corner: “Was this a betrayal, or was it an act of courage? Perhaps both…. This can only be because they have been released by us already, over and over, in silence and darkness… Blind but sure-footed, we step forward as if into a remembered dance.”

    Reply
  17. Neil Avatar
    Neil

    blue_f, you’re not missing anything. Yes, correct grammar would be “would have had,” but much of The Blind Assassin inner story is littered with 1930s era slang typical of the aforementioned pulp fiction and/or Hollywood noir movies.

    Reply
  18. Amanda Avatar
    Amanda

    Years ago, a friend told me about how Coleridge woke from an opium-induced dream in which he’d written the lines of Kubla Khan. He set to work on an epic poem on waking, but was interrupted by someone who knocked at his door and forgot all but that which he’d already written.

    Wondering if the story was even true, I sought a credible source (Wikipedia…) and, apparently, Coleridge was interrupted by a “person from Porlock.” What a wonderful excuse for the disparity between the gilded palace conceptualized in one’s head and the resulting chicken-scratch drawing of a one-dimensional shed, of all those novels unwritten. If it weren’t for that damn guy from Porlock!

    Anyway, the gated city within TBA, the walled pleasure dome filled with “gardens bright with sinuous rills,” the ball for social elites filled frippery and fashion. All places that draw parameters around earthly pleasure beyond which there is mud, pain, blood, death. Decadence is a word that has been appropriated by snack food manufacturers. It makes us think of richness, sweetness, luxurious froth. Of course, it’s really a euphemism for rot. In every setting list above, we see that not only is there a sinister denial of (or perhaps collusion with) geopolitical reality beyond the high walls of each of these rarefied places, but really the walls haven’t kept anything out; there is sepsis in the champagne. Sorry for that terrible sensory image.

    Something about the stories within stories of this novel creates a snare of literary threads in my own mind: There’s a story within a story within in Hamlet, too. A play conceived to uncover the decay and betrayal within the royal family. And throughout my reading, something about this book has brought to mind “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” Perhaps it is the narrator aging, taking stock, or else the Hamlet references there, too. This week, it was the mermaids in the closing stanza (who, in turn, made think of the Damsel with the Dulcimer in Kubla Khan and those inscrutable Peach Women) singing to one another something alluring and beyond interpretation, beguiling and then drowning the dreamer.

    Reply
  19. Guzmán Avatar
    Guzmán

    After a long break (I had to finish another novel), I am working hard to catch up with all of you. Maybe by next week’s entry?

    PS. I am enjoying the book very much.

    Reply
  20. Lydia_S Avatar
    Lydia_S

    I have fallen behind as well. But I will catch up until next week. I am looking forward to it!

    Reply
  21. Ute Avatar
    Ute

    Don’t really feel like commenting tonight…

    Reply
  22. Jennifer E Avatar
    Jennifer E

    Catching up after falling behind last week-so many things coming together in such an interesting way. I have to say one thing I am continuing to enjoy week to week is the vivid descriptions and the way she can write something brief that has worlds of meaning. This has been a very nice and welcome diversion from usual fare these days!

    Reply
  23. Susannah Avatar
    Susannah

    The peach women story was disturbing. Lots of gendered violence this week.

    Reply
  24. Kathy Avatar
    Kathy

    Commenting and yet…..not.

    Reply
  25. Barbara B Avatar
    Barbara B

    It’s hard to find something to say this week, even tho I’m caught up and locked into the story. Maybe it’s because we spent so much time with young Iris and the dread that comes with her. I’m ready for more old Iris, to complain and survive and show me the way.

    Reply
  26. Dr. Vitz Avatar
    Dr. Vitz

    Richard is the embodiment of incipient horror

    If in TBA we are watching a version of Alex & Laura, what are we to take from the ways the story changes for her, but not to her liking exactly?

    Reply
  27. Cecil Vortex Avatar
    Cecil Vortex

    Welcome back, G! 🙂

    Reply
  28. Cecil Vortex Avatar
    Cecil Vortex

    It starts to race in this week’s section — catching up I suspect will be easy for you!

    Reply
  29. Cecil Vortex Avatar
    Cecil Vortex

    I’ve been writing phrases on the bottom of each page, usually from the text, but all I could come up with on that page was “horror.”

    Reply
  30. Cecil Vortex Avatar
    Cecil Vortex

    it counts!

    Reply
  31. Clort Avatar
    Clort

    I want to do a shout-out to all Iris’s terrible dreams! Like the one that opens the Xanadu chapter. Good lord… no wonder it ends with ‘There must be a pill.’ (One suspects she knows there is not.) Having dashed a little ahead (in spite of late late post) I can say that the Xanadu dream contains shadows and also foreshadows and Dr Vitz is extremely correct about Richard. It’s amazing to watch MA filling in Iris’s conscience while deepening an empathetic picture of why she took the form she did.

    .

    Reply
  32. Maggie Avatar
    Maggie

    I’m lost, though then again perhaps not all who meander are lost… I now think I’m ahead, but perhaps behind, but perhaps i am just really enjoying this as a story. I appreciate the erudite wisdom of Iris and the resigned acceptance of aging.

    Reply
  33. Jim Compton Avatar
    Jim Compton

    Speaking of Iris’ erudition, isn’t it maybe a bit implausible that someone so completely lacking in formal education should be so … erudite? But then I also thought it was implausible that she had vivid memories dating to age 3-1/2 and was reading then.

    Reply
  34. Furiosa Avatar
    Furiosa

    I’m here, just lagging. It never occurred to me that Iris shouldn’t be as erudite as she is, probably because her strange, truncated version of an education meant that she read whatever she wanted, and her thoughts were shaped by eclectic influences, extending to her “present” day. Also, Richard hiding the news of her father’s death makes me hope he has a terrible demise in the Water Nixie, preceded by some sort of public humiliation.

    Reply
  35. blue_f Avatar
    blue_f

    Thank you. Makes sense!

    Reply

Leave a Reply to Dr. Vitz Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

More posts